Under a tenner – a week’s food

There will come a point in your time at university where you are, quite simply, broke. You’ll have taken your bag of pennies to the bank – and come back miserable and disheartened because that pile of coppers that you’ve been collecting for months didn’t even amount to enough for a Your Shop meal deal. You’ll have timidly asked flatmates if they remember that time when you paid for their round in Tokyo, and they never got round to reimbursing you. You’ll root through common room sofas, check through the pockets of all your clothes and you may even clean your room in the hope of finding that fiver that you could’ve sworn had been sitting on your desk just the other day.

You may think the natural next step is to reluctantly leave for Morrisons with your old backpack, promising not to return until you’ve cleaned them out of all the 12p noodles and reduced bread that they have in stock. You could be forgiven for thinking this: it is, after all, student lore that when times get hard, cheapy packs of noodles are the best way to save money.

But they’re not. Of course, you know that Mild Curry Flavour Instant Noodles are not going to be the most nutritious meal you could make yourself, but when you’re dead broke, there never seems to be many other options. I’m here to change your mind, by showing you how you can pay for a whole week’s food shopping for under a tenner and stay nutritionally balanced.

First and foremost, we’re shopping at Tesco. There are cheaper supermarkets, and closer ones to campus, but the cheaper ones – Asda, Iceland and Aldi – really scrimp on food quality to the point that they’re not cost-effective, and the ones nearer campus – Sainsbury’s and Morrisons – are a little too expensive for your situation. The nearest Tesco is about an hour’s walk, through the racecourse, from campus. If this doesn’t sound like much fun, you could piggyback onto a friend’s Tesco delivery order, pledging them a few hot meals once the cash starts flowing a little easier.

As for the food itself, it’s simple really. You need a good amount of calories a day – about 2500 for men, 2000 for women – and the food from which you get these should consist of something like three-fifths carbohydrates, one-fifth fat and one-fifth protein (of course, this varies enormously depending on who’s giving the advice). You also need some fibre, some salt and quite a few different vitamins to keep your body ticking over nicely.

Let’s start with the carbohydrates. There are, as your mum has probably told you, good carbs and bad carbs – otherwise known as starches and sugars. You can safely disregard your mum on this one, as sugars play just as important a role in your well-being as any other food group. On the starchy side of things we’ll go for pasta, rice and bread: two packs of Value penne clock in at 34p, long grain rice is 49p and wholemeal bread comes to 47p. As for sugars, we’ll go for a jar of Value mixed fruit jam. Try not to be too suspicious about the ‘mixed fruit’ element, and instead appreciate the variety of – eurgh – 31 per cent apples, 2 per cent rhubarb and 2 per cent plums (and 65 per cent of… let’s not get into that).

The penne and the bread provide a lot of your required protein, but you need different types of protein to fulfil some kind of amino-acid quota. Meat’s a great source of protein, but even in Value form it’s not at all cost-effective. Instead, chuck a six-pack of Value eggs into your basket; this week you’re going vegetarian. You’ll want something to snack on, too. A bag of chopped mixed nuts costs 50p – grab three of these. Again, we’re going to be optimistic, and assume from the ‘mixed’ label that Tesco has mixed together only the finest nuts it could find. As well as protein, eggs and nuts are a good source of fat (fat’s a pretty essential part of anyone’s diet, don’t let the glossy mags tell you otherwise).

Talking of snacking, we’ll also go for a biscuit barrell (I know, it’s spelt ‘barrel’, but Tesco Online spells it ‘barrell’ and you won’t find it otherwise), which is a steal at £1.27 for almost a kilogram of assorted biscuits. Boys, you’ll want to divide these biscuits up so they last for a week; girls, you should aim to have about half the packet in the same time. I’m not trying to be discriminatory here – I’m for equal biscuit rights for everyone – but women should have a bit less sugar and sat fats than men and, unsurprisingly, a barrell (?) of biscuits has its fair share of these.

What are we missing? Well, your basket probably doesn’t look particularly healthy right now. Let’s get some veg in there. Sweet potatoes and broccoli are, nutritionally speaking, the most cost-effective vegetables, and provide you with enough vitamins and fibre to keep you in good shape. Buy about a kilogram of each, which should be about three medium-sized sweet potatoes and three heads of broccoli. Finally, we could go for a bit more fat, so go for a small pack of mild white cheese to spice up your meals a little; you should mentally divide it into seven and have a portion a day, grated onto a meal of your choice.

To recap – your shopping list should look something like this:

2x Value penne (500g) – 0.17+£0.17
Value long grain rice (1kg) – £0.49
Value wholemeal bread (800g) – £0.47
Value mixed fruit jam (454g) – £0.29
Value eggs (box of 6) – £0.69
3x Chopped mixed nuts (100g) – £0.50+£0.50+£0.50
Value biscuit barrell (900g) – £1.27
Loose sweet potatoes (1kg’s worth) – £1.35
Loose broccoli (1kg’s worth) – £1.97
Value mild white cheese (small) – £1.62 or less

Total Cost: £9.99

So what do we do with this food? It’s really up to you – it might not seem like a great variety, but there’s still a lot you can do with these ingredients. I’ll show you one way, but don’t feel tied down by my meal plan!

Breakfast

This one’s easy – two slices of toast and a good topping of jam. Really lather the jam on, because apart from the biscuits it’s your best source of sugars. To an upcoming fresher, this might sound like an incredibly boring start to your day compared to the fry-ups you’ve been tucking into this summer. As soon as you become a student, though, breakfast becomes an entirely different process: the focus is on speed and simplicity, and whether or not you can carry it on your way to a 9:15. Toast and jam scores very well on this front.

Lunch

There are 22 slices of bread in the average 800g pack, so unless you’re one of that rare breed who likes the end bits you should be left with six slices for lunches. Along with the eggs, this’ll make you three meals of scrambled eggs on toast (or boiled egg with soldiers, or fried egg with bread. Endless possibilities!) Alternate your scrambled-egg days because on the remaining four days, your lunch will be the same as your dinner, and that’s not really so interesting.

Dinner

So we have 11 meals to account for now – seven actual dinners and the four lunches that haven’t been covered. I’ll come clean now: rice and pasta are boring. Once in a while, it might be quite nice to just have a plate of plain pasta, or just a bit of rice on its own. But you’ll be eating either for seven straight evenings. The cheese can spice up both (cheesy rice, though not exactly a delicacy, is unexpectedly moreish) but not to any great extent. You’re just going to have to grit your teeth on this one, and try not to think, with every mouthful, of the lovely Bolognese, or risotto, that your meal could have been if you didn’t take your card out with you last Ziggy’s night and buy shots for the whole bar.

The vegetables will also add a bit of interest to your meal (this is the first time this has been said of vegetables, ever). You could have one of your six vegetable items every evening, or you could chop each potato and head of broccoli in half and have a bit for each meal of pasta or rice, but I’ll leave that crucial decision to you. Dice and roast the sweet potato and steam the broccoli for maximum tastiness.

Alternatives to consider: swap a scrambled eggs for a cheese on toast, and add the eggs you save to your pasta for something one step towards a carbonara – or add them to your rice to make egg fried rice. You could also grate a sweet potato and fry it to make a rosti, as a side-course. Hey, I’m trying.

Snacks

As has been said, you’ve got nuts and a barrel of biscuits to last you through the hours between meals. My advice is: tell yourself exactly how many of either you’ll have each day and take them out of the packet, and put the packet firmly back into the cupboard. Do not position yourself next to the packet of biscuits. It will end badly.

Tips and Tricks

Try to regulate your sleeping timetable. Obviously this will be near-to impossible in freshers’ fortnight and pretty difficult in the first term, but try anyway, because when you stop eating meals at times you’re used to, it becomes more difficult to keep to a consistent and regular meal plan, and you start doing funny things like having bowls of cereal at 7pm, or plates of pasta at 4am.

Cut out all drinks. Coffee, tea, squash, milk – they’re just not necessary when you’re on a tight budget. Drink water. If you think you need some form of caffeine, get more sleep.

I shouldn’t really say that the Charles pub, in Heslington, keeps all its condiments on the tables and you could stuff them into your pocket when no one’s looking, because many students work there and I don’t want to get this paper into trouble with that fine establishment. So I won’t say that.

This article’s been a bit specific with the nutrients. This is mostly so I don’t get blamed when someone eats three bowls of pasta a day and turns into an amorphous blob, then says I told them to. However, since this guide should only be used as a short-term solution (if you eat this constantly you will go mad), don’t worry too much if you have a few too many biscuits, or forget about the broccoli. Just try to make up for it with some tastier veg when you get some money in.